'The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems' (1982)
"Pain can make his work excessively and awkwardly rhetorical, but he knows how to use his eyes. . . . To command the full measure of serious attention his vision deserves, he needs to shed the period style a little more. But there are signs that he is beginning to do so . . ."

'Angels,' reviewed by Alice Hoffman (1983)
"'Angels' is a terrifying book, a mixture of poetry and obscenity. Some readers may be put off by its melodrama and nearly overwhelming sense of desperation. But whether the characters are conversing with a dark angel or ordering a platter of french fries, they are people who can't be ignored. Mr. Johnson has written a dazzling and savage first novel."

'Fiskadoro' (1985)
"[Johnson's] startlingly original book is an examination of the cataclysmic imagination . . . It is a complex and finally problematic vision. To convey it, Mr. Johnson constructs a fictional cosmos that is hard to enter, but whose resonant power becomes increasingly evident."

'The Stars at Noon' (1986)
"[T]his novel is an encapsulated narrative, begging to be fleshed out. Still, it is daring, this political novel that disdains politics, this philosophical work that rejects all philosophies. Coming just a year after 'Fiskadoro,' it suggests that Denis Johnson is one of our most inventive, unpredictable novelists."

'Resuscitation of a Hanged Man' (1991)
"There has never been any doubt about Denis Johnson's ability to write a gorgeous sentence. . . . The novel seems, like a poem, to be written line to line. It is very much a book about one man, one sensibility. . . . Yet in this book he has not found a subject to match the scale of his talent and intelligence."

'Already Dead: A California Gothic,' reviewed by David Gates (1997)
"Johnson is a wonderful writer, and murk is one of the things he does best -- even if it sometimes swamps the proceedings entirely. . . . Plain silly? You'd think so, just hearing about it. But once Johnson gets his hooks into you -- it takes about two sentences -- it's not so easy to maintain your bemusement, and pretty much impossible to stop reading, severely as he can try your patience."

'The Name of the World,' reviewed by Robert Stone (2000)
"The much-misapplied term 'minimalist' can pretty accurately apply. Transitions are rocky and the view can be dim. At other times, Johnson's unique lyricism lights up his book's interior world . . . There's no doubt about the power of this writer's vision."

A FILM REVIEW:

Film: 'Jesus' Son': Travels With a Stoned Candide(2000)
"Alison Maclean's scruffy, likable new film [is] adapted from a book of linked short stories by Denis Johnson . . . Her decision to string together a series of self-contained vignettes could have resulted in meandering tedium, but she manages to find a loose, improvisatory rhythm that matches Mr. Johnson's discursive riffing, and that gives her scenes a keen edge of surprise."